Designing Your New Home's Floorplan

While you don't have to design your home alone, today's homebuyers can be more self-sufficient than in times past. While a builder will be needed eventually, you can start looking at floorplans now, determining what features are important to you and how you want them combined together. At some point you will probably need to work with an architect to turn your ideas into a real builder-ready floorplan. But in the meantime, a good place to start is browsing our Floorplan Gallery. With over 1800 floorplans distributed among 13 different home styles, you can find something that fits your lifestyle, and you can save or print plans that you like. And all of these floorplans are customizable, so you can keep what you like about a plan and change what you don't. But before you can really make progress on designing your final floorplan, you need to get an idea of what you want.

Make a house scrapbook. If you've wanted to design your home, you've probably thought about what that new home should include. It's time to transfer those mental images onto paper so people can help bring those visions to life. Make it easy and start looking through magazines, websites, and model homes and gathering visual evidence to help that new home materialize. Keep everything together in a binder for easy reference. The builder wants to give you what you want: help him do just that. Consider the many types of homes available from Center Hall Colonial to Mid-Century Modern. Look up any possible winners and don't forget to combine other desired features. Maybe you've always dreamed of building a new home that allows eco-friendly living all on one level. In the modern world of home building, many times you actually can have it all.

Once major design elements have been selected as being top choices, you can really begin to design your home. Start with a design or two from our floorplan gallery or elsewhere, and then decide what you want to change. Experienced professionals can help customize such plans so that new home will come closer to matching those pictures in that binder. Another option is to ask the builder directly for available plans as he may have versions you like and have not yet found.

Research and develop what you've found. Begin sketching rough drafts of some top home plans you're considering. See which plan is really looking like it may be the one. Call in the professionals. Get an architect and pay a consulting fee if needed to get the low down on if your home plan will work. Sometimes a plan may not be suited to your particular lot or development. Building a new home can involve looking at the situation from many angles to yield the best outcome. Ask for the builder's help. The builder wants you in a new home you will be proud of so he is there to help from the planning stages and beyond.

Figuring out exactly what you want when building a new home is the hardest part but it's also the most exciting part. Design your home with creativity and thoughtfulness then add a dash of reality and it's bound to be a success. Use all the home plans available to help you in the quest for creating that vision of home. If you can design your own home, you can do just about anything.